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He had made his reputation as a high-stakes poker player. Then, Paul Horn made a bet that the
Columbus market would be the place to turn around his financial losing streak by establishing two
poker businesses.

But that all ended when the 54-year-old Horn was shot to death this year in his Grove City
apartment.

Horn’s business partner, Daniel Teitelbaum, could be sentenced to death if he’s convicted of
murdering Horn. Teitelbaum, 45, was indicted Dec. 12 on aggravated-murder charges as well as
charges of aggravated burglary and tampering with evidence. He has pleaded not guilty and is being
held in the Franklin County jail without bond. His attorney, Adam L. Nemann, didn’t return phone
calls for comment.

Authorities aren’t talking about a motive, but Teitelbaum was in a bitter business dispute with
Horn over a Grove City poker hall they co-owned. Detectives cited the disagreement in obtaining a
court order to force Teitelbaum to submit a DNA sample after Horn’s body was found in March.

Detectives focused on Teitelbaum, who lived near Atlantic City, N.J., soon after the slaying.
Grove City Police Chief Steve Robinette said investigators think that Teitelbaum confronted Horn at
gunpoint on the morning of March 11.

Horn and Teitelbaum had opened the Grove City poker club in 2009. Horn also had a poker hall on
the Far East Side that Teitelbaum wasn’t involved in. Teitelbaum sued his business partner in May
2010, saying he had invested $150,000 in the club but wasn’t collecting any profits because Horn
was mismanaging the hall and pocketing the profits.

The day that Horn’s body was found by a longtime friend who was staying with him, he was to have
been at the Franklin County Courthouse to give a deposition in the lawsuit.

After Horn’s death, a judge awarded Teitelbaum ownership of the club at 3131 Broadway, and
Teitelbaum changed the name from Platinum Players Club to Broadway Club.

Horn led a colorful and unconventional life, friends and family members say.

“From the time he was a little boy, he was shrewd,” said his mother, Anne Marie Horn, 83, who
still lives in the Manassas Park, Va., home where Paul Horn grew up with four siblings.

When he was just a boy, Horn would buy 25 cents worth of penny candy, hawk it on the streets and
come home with a $1 profit, his mother said.

Horn’s reputation grew around the community when, in his early 20s, he won a pool hall in a game
of pool, said his daughter Ashley Horn, 24, who is the second-oldest of four daughters he
raised.

During the 1990s, Horn supported his wife and daughters by playing poker in Las Vegas and
Atlantic City. His heyday was before the game became popular on television and the prize money
grew, said Ashley, of Warrenton, Va.

“He’d go up on Thursday or Friday (to Atlantic City) and come home on Sundays,” she said.

There were enough winnings to fuel a comfortable lifestyle in Nokesville, Va., Ashley said,
recalling that, when she was young, her dad would take the girls to fairs and carnivals and “spoil
them rotten.”

Paul Horn later owned a bar in Ranson, W.Va., near a racetrack. But he ran into financial
problems. Federal and local governments put liens for thousands owed in back taxes on the home he
kept for his family in Virginia.

He sold the bar and returned to the card tables of Las Vegas with the hope of making big money
again, Ashley Horn said. But she said he was past his poker-playing prime.

“Daddy was older, and his mind was not as sharp as it used to be,” she said.

Still, she gets angry when she hears accusations that her father didn’t pay his debts.

“When my father had money, the amount of people he helped was limitless. I remember him handing
people money,” she said. “He would tell me, ‘You need to stay in good with people because later,
when you need help, they will help you.’ ”

Randy Scott, who worked security for Horn at the Grove City club, said he can attest to Horn’s
generosity. Scott said Horn once gave him $1,500 to cover medical costs for his son.

“He was like a big old teddy bear,” Scott said.

Paul Horn hoped he could turn his luck around by coming to Columbus in late 2009 and opening the
poker halls, where people pay membership fees to play. The businesses are legal as long as the club
does not collect money from the games.

In an interview with a blog devoted to gambling, Horn said he had attended a car show here and
determined that the Columbus market would be a good place for a professionally run poker club.

Ashley Horn said her father was under a lot of stress because of starting the businesses and
arguing with Teitelbaum. He was gaining weight and battling depression.

After her father’s death, she came across a notebook. In it, her father had written:
Sacrifice. Have only seen my children and mother twice in the last eight months. Missing
birthdays for the first time.

Ashley Horn said her parents divorced in 2004 but remained friendly, and her father still paid
for their house in Virginia. With her father dead and leaving nothing, she said her mom’s house is
in foreclosure.

After her father’s death, Ashley Horn said she visited the Grove City club, and Teitelbaum
showed her around. She said she now thinks about how she “shook the hand of the man” who could be
responsible for her father’s death.

“I wish that he would have never went up there (to Columbus),” Ashley said of her father. “He
wanted to make money for his children. He wanted to be the provider.”